The Fullerton City Council wants the state’s $ 15 million, but not if it means saving the whole park.

Angela Lindstrom

Reprinted from the Early September Edition of the Fullerton Observer

In the August 2017 issue of the Fullerton Observer, I wrote a somewhat tongue-in-cheek piece titled “I’m All for Saving Coyote Hills… Unless It Can Actually Be Done”. This was in response to the Orange County Register’s misinformed editorial criticizing a couple of pending state legislations to help fund the acquisition of West Coyote Hills for a public park and preserve.

AB 510 and SB 714 legislations as currently proposed by Assemblywoman Quirk-Silva and Senator Newman would set up a multi-year funding program through a Coyote Hills Conservancy to save all of Coyote Hills as a park and preserve for our park poor region of North Orange County. This is consistent with Fullerton voters’ 2012 Measure W referendum that rejected the development of West Coyote Hills.

Sadly, the majority of the Fullerton City Council lived up to my “expectation” by rejecting AB 510 and SB 714 at its August 1st City Council meeting. It’s not that they don’t want the state funds. They want the money to go directly to the City so they can implement what they call the “Path Forward”, a euphemism for the development of West Coyote Hills as proposed by Chevron-Pacific Coast Homes.

This is the “local control” (another euphemism) they want so they can circumvent the conservancy oversight of park funds. Under this path forward to development, the City can purchase a couple of pieces of land at the highest entitled price. But even if that is successful, most of the 760 houses and shopping center will still be built on the remaining land.

Wait, millions of our tax dollars will be paid to Chevron-PCH and we have to live with all the negative impacts of their development: 10,000 additional daily car-trips on our streets, air and dust pollution, houses built on polluted oil wells and an earthquake fault, and overcrowded schools?

Councilwoman Fitzgerald followed up this Council meeting by slamming AB 510 and SB 714 in the OC Register, borrowing the famous words (not infamous as she wrote) of Ronald Reagan: “The most terrifying words in the English language are, ‘I’m from the government, I’m here to help.’” We should be more terrified of the lack ofcitizen local control over our own local government.

But it gets worse. At the August 29th Special Council meeting, Councilwoman Fitzgerald insisted on discussing an un-agendized item to re-write SB714. She proposed language to poison and weaken SB 714 to enable the development of Coyote Hills.

Fullerton City Councilmember Jennifer Fitzgerald introduces language to modify SB 714 during a joint study session about the Fox Block.

SB 714 as proposed by Senator Josh Newman would gather funds to save all 510 acres of Coyote Hills for a public park and preserve. Councilwoman Fitzgerald wants to add language to legitimize the Council’s 2015 approval of Chevron’s Vesting Tentative Tract Map (VTTM), with all of its terms and conditions, including the Environmental Impact Report as the only plan for Coyote Hills (development).

The legitimacy of this VTTM the Fullerton City Council approved by ignoring the people’s 2012 Measure W vote is the very subject of a lawsuit led by the Friends of Coyote Hills, Friends of Harbors, Beaches and Parks, and the Center for Biodiversity.

If you support saving Coyote Hills and don’t want to lose this funding opportunity, write or call the Fullerton City Council and tell them to support AB 510 and SB 714 as proposed by Assemblywoman Sharon Quirk-Silva and State Senator Josh Newman. Stop trying to confuse the public with the path forward to development.

The 29th District’s “Aloha” Bob Huff will be termed out of the California State Senate this year. Three candidates have filed to run for the seat that serves Fullerton and other cities in Northeast O.C. and Southeast L.A. Republican 55th District Sate Assemblywoman and former Diamond Bar City Councilwoman Ling Ling Chang has filed papers. On the Democrat side two candidates intend to run for the open seat. Former Irvine Mayor Sukhee Kang is one of them. Mr. Kang unsuccessfully ran for U.S. Congress, losing to John Campbell in 2012. The other is Fullerton’s Josh Newman.

Of the two Democrats, Josh Newman has the distinction of actually having lived in the district for some time, as opposed to opponent Sukhee Kang, who reportedly registered to vote in Fullerton just about a month before announcing his candidacy.

Mr. Kang’s website displays a list of Democratic Party endorsements longer than the distance between his former home in Irvine and our 29th District. One of these endorsements is by former Fullerton Mayor and former 65th State Assemblywoman Sharon Quirk-Silva, who has chosen him over another Democrat who made Fullerton his home long before ever thinking about running for office here. Josh Newman, a veteran, runs an organization that assists “young veterans returning to the Orange County/Greater Los Angeles area in the pursuit of rewarding, career-oriented employment upon completion of their military service and return or relocation to Southern California”.

Sharon Quirk-Silva is also running for office again, trying to regain the 65th Assembly seat she lost to newcomer Young Kim in 2014. Her endorsement of a carpetbagging former Irvine mayor over a local Democrat demonstrates the influence major party political structures have on races for state and local offices. There was almost certainly never any possibility that a candidate running for a state office would endorse anyone not already anointed by the California Democratic Party. To do otherwise is to risk losing financial and organizational support from the state party—support that will be sorely needed in November.

It is lamentable that a candidate can be so shut out by his political party so early in an election cycle, by losing any chance of endorsements by local party political leaders before the race has even begun. The California Democratic Party itself issues endorsements to candidates months before voters have a chance to have their voices heard at the polls. It is no wonder that so many voters no longer identify with either dominate political party, choosing instead to designate themselves as Decline to State or seeking out third parties with more democratic political structures in place.

On Monday, March 16 Democrat Sharon Quirk-Silva will host a fundraiser for her bid to reclaim the 65th California Assembly seat from freshman incumbent Republican Young Kim, who triumphed over her in one of the most expensive Assembly elections in state history last year.

In 2012 Sharon Quirk-Silva scored an upset victory over then-incumbent Chris Norby, helping the Democrats to secure a solid two-thirds majority in both legislative houses. While in office, she promoted the establishment of a federal cemetery for military veterans in Orange County. Her voting record can be found here at votesmart.org. It is generally favorable toward labor and immigration priorities, and shows support for limiting high capacity magazines for some guns–just the sort of issues to coax steam from the ears of conservatives. Her environmental record is mixed, showing two “Nay” votes against a statewide plastic bag ban. Lamentably, The Rag has no indication that she ever sought reform of POBR, the Peace Officers Bill of Rights, to require more transparency and accountability of law enforcement officers and agencies.

Her re-election in 2014 was all but impossible given the low voter turnout by Democrats in that year’s mid-term contest. Many voters quickly tired of receiving dozens of mailers from each campaign every week, but at least it was a contested election, something nearly unheard of thanks to gerrymandered legislative districts that normally favor one party over the other.

Barely three months into the job, Young Kim doesn’t have much of a record to run against, other than offering a bill that would prohibit adding toll lanes to OC freeways without direct approval of the electorate–something likely to be popular among voters. With Prop. 14 in place to eliminate third party candidates, it could be a very close election. Sharon Quirk-Silva is no doubt counting on higher voter turnout by her party in a presidential election year to put her over the top, but she may need a stronger message to motivate the electorate this time around.